


In Unlikely Places

by stickman



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asexual Relationship, F/M, London, M/M, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slice of Life, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-04 02:59:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12160173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickman/pseuds/stickman
Summary: When Gandalf had asked Bilbo to look after his shop for a bit, Bilbo expected the old man to mean a few weeks, two months at most. But then, he’d also expected to have figured out what on earth he’s doing with his life by 34. He’d expected that he’d find work that had anything to do with his degree, that he wouldn’t suddenly be raising an 8-year-old, that he wouldn’t step into a business on the verge of unexpected financial ruin. And yet, there he was.When he ended up with an employee who was more efficient than he could ever have hoped to be, it seemed like things might finally turn around. Now if only Bilbo could figure out what to do about that man who kept glaring at him from the doorway twice a week like clockwork, and why his heart beat a little harder every time.--ON HIATUS--





	In Unlikely Places

CHAPTER ONE

 

You might have thought that a used bookshop tucked in between a fire station and the Thames, just across from the rail tracks, wouldn’t be a very good business venture. And you’d have been right. Honestly, its current manager didn’t know what had possessed the original owner to set up shop in this location, however many years ago. The only reason at all they were still in business was the café in the rear of the building, and firefighters next door who were always hungry.

Bilbo Baggins had been drifting through life after doing an MPhil in Modern Languages at Magdalen College, Oxford, lecturing and publishing some but largely content to return to his parents’ house in the Dorset hills and spend his days lazing around the garden, keeping his mother company and visiting his father’s grave. Looking back, he wasn’t particularly proud of those years, except that he did think he was a good son to an ailing mother. When she passed also, shortly after his thirtieth birthday, he’d tried to continue on in the same way. Kept the place in good repair, exchanged pleasantries with the neighbours over the garden hedges, collected his mail and generally made a pretence of being all right. But waking each morning alone in an empty house, watching the seasons change the garden from green to brown and back again . . . vaguely, he’d started to realise that he was falling apart a bit. He’d always been something of the odd one out amongst his relatives and didn’t much care, but even he eventually had to admit that going for weeks on end without talking to anyone was odd. Not just as in unsociable-odd but actually, properly worrisome. So when an old friend of his mother’s had showed up at the house one afternoon and their conversation somehow turned into a job offer—really, an offer of starting his life anew—Bilbo had taken it. He’d packed up his belongings, left the property in the care of his favourite cousins, and boarded the first of several trains that would take him into London’s Cannon Street Station.

The job offer, as Gandalf had explained, entailed running Greyhame Books, a small shop and café, as well as taking over the flat on the first floor above. “I need someone to look after the place while I’m gone,” the man had said, and Bilbo had about twenty questions but had asked only one.

“Where are you going?”

“Oh, I have some things to take care of, that’s all. It shouldn’t be any trouble.”

Gandalf had left him the keys to the property and an over-filled notebook with all sorts of information on the shop, its accounts, its business partners, more information than Bilbo knew what to do with. And then Gandalf had just left him. Bilbo had assumed it might take a month, perhaps two, for Gandalf to return, but eighteen months in he had to admit that the old man was impossible to predict. What little information they exchanged through emails or phonecalls never touched on a return date, and eventually Bilbo stopped asking.

Bilbo suspected Gandalf had gone abroad somewhere, as he often did. He used to bring back the best gifts when Bilbo was young, and tell the best stories. None of which made up for the fact that Gandalf had missed Bilbo’s mother’s funeral, but Bilbo was trying to let go of grudges as part of his “become a real person again” project. It certainly helped that he left most of his extended family behind in Dorset and had no one to complain about in the City, largely because he knew no one.

Or, nearly no one. After a year of running the place in Gandalf’s stead, Bilbo had learned the name of the fire chief who came by whenever his shift break allowed. He must have been on the morning shift that day, as it was just after noon when the shop’s bell rang and Dwalin walked in. Even after all this time Bilbo still found him intimidatingly tall, but it did help a bit that Dwalin always forgot to duck his head under the doorway into the back section where the café was. Somehow the resulting collisionmade him more human, less superhuman.

“Your usual today?” Bilbo asked. Dwalin waved a hand at him and went to collapse on the sofa. It was a longstanding joke between them. Really, Dwalin would eat anything anyone put in front of him. Bilbo had learned this quickly. He let the fire chief sleep a bit while he cooked lunch and woke him later by nudging his boot off the sofa’s armrest. “Manners,” Bilbo said, and gave Dwalin his sternest look.

“You’re worse than my maiden aunt,” Dwalin groused, taking his plate from Bilbo.

Bilbo shook his head, a look only recently turned more fond than exasperated, and left Dwalin to eat in peace, going back out to the register in the front of the shop. It was an unseasonably warm Thursday in September, almost his birthday. He’d be thirty-four. He rather thought he’d have more direction in his life by this point—that he’d be doing something with his degree, for one, instead of making fry-ups for an oversized Scotsman—but things had a way of never working out the way you’d expect. The second small bedroom upstairs, currently filled with the odds and ends of an eight-year-old boy, was a testament to that. Bilbo had been looking after his cousin Frodo for close to six months now, which equally meant that his parents’ home, Bag End, had belonged to some wealthy American buyers for half a year. Every day he hoped it would get easier, that they’d know how to talk to one another, that the deep abiding nostalgia for Bag End’s gardens would fade, that the intensity of Frodo’s grief for his parents would wane. Perhaps this would be the week. They did share the same birthday, after all. Perhaps it could mark more than one occasion.

“Thanks for lunch,” the fire chief said, interrupting Bilbo’s thoughts as he handed over his card.

“Thanks for paying my bills,” Bilbo replied, another joke between them, though it was nearly true.

“I have to say, as we’re coming up on your one year anniversary, this place is on fire a lot less since you’ve taken over management,” Dwalin told him. “Makes a nice change to come over for a cuppa, rather than to put out a kitchen fire.”

“One would hope,” said Bilbo, and winced, though he was hardly surprised. Gandalf had always had a tendency towards the pyrotechnic. Come to think of it, Bilbo had noticed a few blackened patches here and there in the shop, patches which no amount of bleach would cure. So that explained a lot.

After the fire chief left, Bilbo’s afternoon was quiet again. He had a few hours yet until Frodo got back from school. A few of the other men who worked at the fire station came in for coffees, a young mother walked through with a little girl, and Bilbo spent most of his time flipping through Gandalf’s ledgers and trying to make sense of things.

He really had no idea how the shop stayed afloat in this economy. It was impossible to compete against online dealers, and their location wasn’t central enough to attract tourists passing by. Anyone who came into the area was more likely milling about the Tower on one side, or St. Paul’s on the other, or any number of more famous locations. Still, despite the financial disaster, Bilbo was glad for the quiet that Greyhame Books offered. He’d had a moment of panic on the train into the City, wondering if he was going to go into shock to be back amongst crowds so suddenly after so long a time alone. Breaking down on the platform at Waterloo Station while waiting to change trains was, for a short time, a very real possibility. So when he’d finally arrived at the address Gandalf gave him and found a dead-end street with only passing trains to disrupt the emptiness, he was relieved. The trains brought back memories of when he had lived in student accommodations along the canal at Oxford, near the railway lines. If this was to be his re-introduction to the land of the living, a little quiet wasn’t so bad a thing.

The weather shifted and afternoon sun shone in through the shop window, catching on the dust on the shelves, especially those over Bilbo’s head. He’d always found dusting to be an unbearable chore, and yet he supposed he’d have to get over that. With a sigh Bilbo pushed off the stool behind the counter and went to find a rag. The shop was something of a maze, so he just picked the nearest shelf and set to work, albeit half-heartedly. Then the door opened and the bell sounded, and Bilbo looked up as a tall, dark-haired woman walked in.

“All right?” he greeted, and looked away again, expecting her to go off to browse the shelves.

Instead, she walked up to the counter, startling him. “Hello,” she said. “I saw you were hiring.” Her voice had a hint of a Northern accent and it distracted Bilbo for a moment until her words registered.

“Hiring?” he repeated.

“The sign in the window,” she said, gesturing, and sure enough if Bilbo squinted he could see it, and read the lettering backwards: Help wanted, inquire within.

“Oh,” he said. “That sign.”

“Yes.” She looked at him, and he looked at her. She was even taller up close and Bilbo straightened up to better meet her gaze. Her eyes were a very deep blue, unblinking. He was just starting to wonder if they were going to have a staring contest when she continued, “I would like to apply. I have my resume, and a list of references.”

Bilbo fumbled for the papers she offered and paged through them, trying to think of what to say. “Good Lord, you’re overqualified,” he ended up blurting out, noting her previous work experience—accounts manager for one of the many hospitals in the city, some years at a bank—and education. The thought of hiring someone with a doctorate in applied mathematics to work at a run-down shop was, it had to be said, absurd. Rather like his own position at the shop, but at least he knew his own reasons for being there.

“Does that mean you won’t hire me?” she asked.

“No. Not necessarily.” Bilbo looked up to meet her eyes again. “Just that I feel I have to tell you, you could get higher wages elsewhere with all your qualifications. And to be honest, I’m not even the owner here, more sort of a temporary manager. I hadn’t intended to hire anyone on.”

“I’ve tried applying elsewhere,” she told him. “It hasn’t worked out.”

“Ah.” Bilbo shuffled her papers, looked back to the top of her resume for a name. Dis Oakenshield, it said. Which was probably a name from some country’s North, but not this one.

“Look,” Dis said, putting her hands on the counter. “I need this job. Will you hire me, or are you just going to waste my time?”

Bilbo huffed. “Pardon? Me, wasting yours? Are you sure it’s not the other way around?”

Dis looked around, pointedly exaggerating the motion. “I don’t see anyone else in here. I’m sure you can spare the time.”

“Be that as it may,” Bilbo started, affronted, and then sighed again and ran a hand through his hair. “Fair point,” he admitted. “But clearly you can see that since there’s no one here, there’s no money to be had. I’m not trying to fool you when I say I wouldn’t be able to pay you much.”

“The job itself would be enough,” Dis said.

Bilbo frowned at her. Who took a job that didn’t pay well? Unless she had some other part-time work with better compensation, or didn’t need to pay rent, or . . . any number of things, possibly, but none of them likely to lead someone to the door of Greyhame Books. She didn’t look like someone struggling to make ends meet, though Bilbo had learned long ago that appearances never did count for much. Still, she was dressed nicely: rather expensive-looking earrings but no wedding ring, hair twisted up in some kind of complicated knot, pale blue shirt neatly fitted. She was frowning, and Bilbo took a step back when he realised that she was probably frowning only because he’d been frowning at her. Rarely socially acceptable. He was going to have to work on that. It had become something of his default expression lately.

“Well, Dis Oakenshield,” he said at last, “can you cook?”

“Enough not to poison my family,” Dis said, and smiled for the first time. “But it’s not my strongest point.”

“Right. I gather that would be something with maths.”

“Yes.”

Bilbo hummed noncommittally as he fiddled with the paperclip from her materials. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “If you can spare the afternoon, and help me make some sense of the finances for this place, you’re hired. I really can’t promise much in terms of wages, though. At least, not with the way business has been lately. I need to know that you understand that.”

“I understand,” Dis said.

Bilbo didn’t understand. If his parents hadn’t left him a sizable inheritance, he wouldn’t have been able to make ends meet, not with his pay having to cover food and Frodo’s school fees and transportation and all. London rents remained sky-high, even as wages had fallen. Bilbo was more grateful than ever that Greyhame Books had living quarters above, so that at least he and Frodo weren’t reduced to sleeping in the chairs of the café. He studied Dis a moment more, and then shrugged his shoulders. It wasn’t as though he really had anything to lose, besides hours of uninterrupted solitude. And he should probably be trying a bit harder to lose those, to be honest. “So what do you say?” he asked.

“I have to make a call, but then yes.”

“Right. Excellent.” Bilbo held his hand out and Dis took it, her grip firm. “In that case, I suppose you can consider yourself provisionally hired. Welcome to Greyhame Books.”

“I take it you’re not Greyhame, then?”

“Oh!” Bilbo laughed. “No, not me. Sorry, I didn’t introduce myself. My name’s Bilbo Baggins. I’ve just taken over managing this place as a favour to a friend. It’s something of a long story, actually. But considering the state he left the accounts in, I feel confident in saying that he would approve of me hiring you to sort things out.”

“Hmm.” Dis gave him a long look, not stern exactly, but measuring.

“Or,” Bilbo amended, “somewhat confident, at least.”

“Let me make that call,” she said after a long, silent moment while Bilbo shuffled his feet. “Then let’s get to work.”

And that was how, without really intending to, Bilbo ended up with not only an employee but someone who was far more qualified at managing a shop than he was. After a short phone call in a language Bilbo wasn’t familiar with—an intriguing fact in and of itself—Dis promptly took over. She sorted all of Gandalf’s miscellaneous receipts and records into neat piles, brushed a layer of dust off the computer at the front register, and began making spreadsheets. Bilbo knew enough to admit when he was out-ranked, and so resumed his quest for a rag to make at attempt at cleaning up the shelves. They didn’t talk as they worked, only the soft click of computer keys, rustle of papers, and Bilbo’s occasional absent-minded humming to disturb the silence. When the shadows grew longer, the sun dropping down behind the corporate offices across the way, Bilbo realised that it was past four and he hadn’t even had tea. He emerged from the nonfiction corner, patting dust out of the knees of his pants, and saw Dis still at the counter, working.

“How goes it?” he asked, marveling at the dust motes glinting in the late afternoon light. When did the place get so dirty?

“How long have you been working here?” Dis asked, instead of answering the question.

“Er, about a year? Why?”

“So I know that you’re not the one responsible for this mess. No one could possibly have done all this in a year.” Dis pushed the high-backed stool away from the counter and stretched, leveling an even stare at Bilbo. “Congratulations, you are not to blame.”

“Thank you, I suppose,” Bilbo laughed. “Not that it helps any.”

“It really doesn’t.” Dis turned the computer monitor to face Bilbo, so he could see the numbers charted out in the spreadsheet, too many entries in red type.

“Efficient,” Bilbo remarked, for lack of a better answer. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

Dis spun the monitor back around and tapped at the keyboard a few more times. “If you’re offering,” she said after a moment.

“I am. Follow me, the kitchen’s in the back.”

“Not concerned about anyone coming in while we’re gone?” Dis asked, and Bilbo just turned and raised an eyebrow at her. “Only testing. Lead the way, Bilbo.”

Bilbo put the kettle on while Dis took a seat at the high counter-top that divided the main seating area from the kitchen. He wasn’t used to having anyone watching him and it was a little bit disconcerting that he could feels Dis’s gaze following him as he laid out mugs and spoons. When he heard the sound of not-quite-smothered laughter as he dropped the sugar, Bilbo spun around, hands on his hips.

“Sorry, sorry,” Dis said, waving a hand at him. “You just looked so serious. About tea.”

“Tea is serious.”

“If you say so.”

Self-conscious, Bilbo turned back to the hot water and was quiet as he filled both their mugs. “If we’re to be working together,” he said slowly, stirring sugar into his tea, “I should say that I’m not very good with people. Before I came here, I’d been . . . on my own awhile. So this is an adjustment.”

“Well, fortunately for you,” Dis said, taking her mug from him, “I am wonderful with people.”

“Sure of ourselves, aren’t we?” Bilbo muttered, and sipped his tea.

“I grew up with two brothers, and I’ve raised two sons. I can handle people. Also, my family is an entity in and of itself.”

“What does that mean?” Bilbo asked, looking up at her, just as the bell rang to signal someone entering the shop.

“A story for another time, perhaps,” Dis said. “Looks like you have a customer.”

“Oh, no,” Bilbo shook his head as he glanced at the clock on the wall. “That’ll just be Frodo.” He leaned around the counter and called, “We’re in the back, Frodo! Come by if you want tea.”

The door chimed shut and Bilbo listened for footsteps, sighing when he heard them heading upstairs. Not a good day, then.

“Friend?” Dis asked.

“Cousin,” Bilbo said. “Sorry, I should go check on him.” He stood and started for the shop. “Do you . . . That is, if you don’t mind seeing yourself out . . .”

“I think I can find the door,” Dis said. “What time do you open tomorrow?”

“Seven? Technically. But really, whenever.”

“Bilbo, first rule of business: Be consistent. I’ll see you at seven.”

“Right. Yes, good.” Bilbo gave a nod, distracted, and made his way around the stacks to the staircase at the far side. He hesitated for a moment on the steps, wondering if it really was all right to leave Dis on her own downstairs, and then reasoned that it wasn’t as if much could happen that would make the shop worse. “Frodo?” he called out, opening the door to their flat. When the boy didn’t answer, Bilbo took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. If he only kept telling himself that he could handle this, one day it might be true.

“Frodo?” Bilbo knocked on the door to the boy’s room, really a large closet that had been transformed into a small but passable bedroom. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“No.”

“How was your day?”

“Fine.”

Bilbo knocked his forehead against the door. He’d really hoped that Frodo would have moved past one-word responses by now and yet they kept coming back. “Can I come in?” he asked, trying not to let the hesitation show in his voice.

“Why?” Frodo asked.

“Perhaps I’ve forgotten what you look like.”

The door opened and Bilbo stumbled. Frodo was looking up at him, small and dark-haired and far too serious. “You haven’t,” he said.

“No, I suppose not.” Bilbo put a hand on Frodo’s head. “Bad day, huh, kid?”

“It was fine, Bilbo. Really.”

“Change out of your uniform and then come down, all right? You can start your schoolwork in the café while I finish up, and then we’ll see about supper. Anything you want.”

“Sure,” Frodo said, looking down at his feet. Bilbo waited for more but when it didn’t come he just ruffled Frodo’s hair and left the boy to change clothes. Their flat wasn’t very large—besides Frodo’s room, Bilbo had a room of his own, and they shared a sitting room and bath. There was a kitchenette that was decent enough for making tea or porridge but Bilbo was rather spoiled by the kitchen at Bag End and so tended to go downstairs to the caféwhenever he needed to cook a proper meal.

When he stepped back into the shop, Dis was gone, a note by the register in neat cursive telling him that she would be back tomorrow, and not to touch anything. “Telling me not to touch anything in my own shop. That takes some nerve.” Bilbo swiped a hand across the top of the monitor, just to prove a point, and was surprised when his fingers came away clean. The entire counter was clean, actually, and everything on the shelves below sorted and stacked. Bilbo had never thought to bother organising it, because what was the point? But apparently, Dis really was far more efficient than he could ever hope to be. “Well, damn,” he sighed. “I suppose that’s me out of a desk job.”

Greyhame Books, according to the hours painted on its front door, opened at seven in the morning and closed at nine in the evening. Bilbo had kept those hours studiously for the first week or so and then given up when it was clear that no one ever came by that early, or that late. If they were closer to University College, or nearer to any of the teaching hospitals, the café might have been a draw for the evening student crowds. They had the table space, and what Bilbo supposed was a fairly hip aesthetic: exposed whitewashed brick on the connecting wall, industrial-style lighting, battered yet comfortable old furniture. Not to mention the café itself was actually set up in an old greenhouse and even on rainy days, the glass walls and ceiling brought in light. And he wasn’t one to brag, but Bilbo did consider himself to be fairly skilled in the kitchen, not to mention rather adept at keeping all the plants alive. There was no real reason for the place to be so empty, and yet empty it remained. Perhaps if Dis was as good with people as she claimed, she’d have some ideas about that, too.

Bilbo was wiping down the tables one last time when Frodo descended the stairs in socks, jeans, and a t-shirt that was much too big for him. Bilbo’s heart seized a little when he saw the faded logo for Bywater Prep, where both he and Frodo’s mother had attended secondary school. “Thoughts about supper?” he asked Frodo, clearing his throat. “We could get takeaway, if you’d like.”

“Anything’s fine..”

“Well, all right. Pasta, then? I’ve some nice tomatoes from the market last weekend still.”

Frodo nodded, and slid into a seat at the table he liked, the one beneath a particularly large pothos plant. He spread out his school books and started work but Bilbo could tell he was distracted. And why wouldn’t he be? Eight years old, almost nine, living with your parents’ mutual cousin in a tiny flat on a dead-end street. No more woods and rivers to roam, no more long walks home from the local school with the friends that had known him all his life. Bilbo had often wondered if it really was for the best, that he raise Frodo. But then, it wasn’t as if he’d had a choice. It had been painfully, awfully clear at the funeral that the only other family members who offered to take in Frodo were more interested in his inheritance than the boy himself. Having watched those same family members stand around his own parents’ graves not that long ago, Bilbo had acted more on instinct and anger than anything else, stepping forward to take Frodo under his arm and lead the boy away.

He worried about Frodo. Worried whether he was truly eating enough, if he was making any friends in his new school, if he was getting enough sleep at night. The move to London was meant to be a new start for both of them but nothing was ever that easy. Bilbo worried that uprooting Frodo was doing more damage than good. And yet, short of sending the boy back, which would almost certainly make things worse, there was nothing to be done. He just had to step up, and try harder.

Later that night, when Frodo was tucked up in bed and, hopefully, asleep, Bilbo sat at the narrow desk in his room staring at his laptop. There had to be something he could do, some old connections he could still reach out to. Dis’s arrival had flipped a switch of sorts in him: it had become clear that the way he and Frodo were just quietly carrying on in their own private isolations wasn’t simply going to work itself out into a healthy relationship one day, just like the shop’s finances wouldn’t miraculously resolve themselves. And of course he knew these things, but knowing them and having someone else walk in and point them out were two different things entirely. Gandalf had entrusted the shop to him, and Prim and Drogo had equally entrusted their child to him, even if not by design. His parents had left everything to him. “I suppose,” Bilbo said to himself, “it’s well past time I started to do something about all of that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends, I'm back with another Modern AU. Not to reveal too much straightaway, but if you know me & my writing you can probably guess where this is headed. . . There are a few slight spoilers in the tags but I've also deliberately left things out because I like to keep you all guessing, haha. I'm still figuring out this story, and updates will likely be slow as I'm in my last year of my Ph.D. so I'm doing my dissertation & the job market, but I needed to do something for my own sanity and that apparently involves writing for The Hobbit again.
> 
> Feel free to come and talk with me about this AU on tumblr @stick-around-town! I'll be making some playlists/song recs, and maybe some edits/graphics to post over there if I have time, but I also just like hearing from you all. Thanks for reading & giving this story your support.


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